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The Drowning Incident That Put a Whole New Perspective On Life
Witnessing death up close and personal was something I definitely wasn’t prepared for
TW: mentions of death, mortality, and suffering
I began my trekking journey in India sometime around 2012. Over the course of the next 10 years, I would encounter or bear witness to numerous kinds of incidents which would be captivating, scary, and moving in equal parts.
I remember some of them so vividly like they just happened yesterday. There was that incident where I was dangling out of a train door on an unreserved compartment coach while on the way to a trek. There was that time I got separated from my group in the forest, but luckily found them just in the nick of time. There was also that incident where I came within striking distance of a venomous snake, one of my most poignant and evocative memories.
However, these incidents, while no less moving and poignant, don’t even come close to what I’d experience during a routine weekend trek to one of our regular haunts in South India. Undeniably, the most humbling experience I’ve had during the course of my exploratory sojourns in India was watching someone die helplessly right in front of my very own eyes. It would be my first time watching someone die. Now, I have two reactions to this. The enthusiastic bubbly trekker part…
